


A Thin Line

by mollymauks



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Amnesia Molly, Angst, Caleb is a mess, Flirting, Hurt/Comfort, It's all going on here, M/M, Molly is a Mess, Other, PTSD Caleb, These tags make this seem a lot grimmer than it actually is, UST, everyone is a mess, patch-up trope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-03 22:57:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14006670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollymauks/pseuds/mollymauks
Summary: Caleb finds Molly attempting to patch himself up after a battle, and doing more damage in the process, and steps in to take care of him himself. Flirting, angsting, and a smidge of philosophising follows.'You could have asked her before she was exhausted, rather than letting her waste her energies on my scrapes and bruises,” Caleb accused.“You’re more delicate than I am, sweetheart,” Molly informed him, smiling sweetly.Caleb scowled. He was very good at that. It must have been from all the practice. Molly found it rather endearing.'





	A Thin Line

The soft hissing sound of Zemnian cursing made Molly look up. 

Caleb had pushed his way into the back room of the tavern they were drinking in that night, which Molly had appropriated to do some emergency patch-up on himself. 

“You’re a mess,” Caleb accused in Common, frowning down at him. 

“You look lovely yourself, Caleb,” Molly replied cheerfully, glancing back down at the still oozing wounds in his chest and continuing to dab at them with the dampened rags he had sitting around him. 

Caleb cursed again and walked swiftly over to him, the ends of his coat swishing as he approached. “Stop that,” he told him, batting his hand away from the puncture wounds, one of which still had a rather pesky arrowhead jammed into it, which he hadn’t noticed before. “You’re just making a mess,” he huffed irritably, “Here- Let me-” 

Molly sat still, head cocked curiously to one side as Caleb tutted over the state of his work area, cleared it up, then dragged a stool over and perched himself on it, ushering Molly off the table and onto a second so they were at a level height. 

Caleb shrugged off his coat, then pushed the sleeves of his shirt up to keep them out of the way. He gingerly peeled the open collar of Molly’s shirt open to give him a better look at what he was dealing with, then proceeded to tut and befoul the air with another string of curses in his native tongue. Molly smiled faintly at that. 

Caleb eyed him then said, “How attached would you say you are to this shirt?” 

“Fairly, it’s on my body right now,” Molly quipped at once. 

Caleb didn’t seem to appreciate this. Molly made a mental note to work on his sense of humour at some later time. 

“I meant emotionally,” Caleb clarified, unnecessarily, since Molly knew exactly what he meant. 

He shrugged, and regretted it when his shoulder twinged and a trickle of blood leaked from one of the wounds as he pulled it open further. “We’ve been through a lot,” he said, with a longing, wistful air, then smiled back down at Caleb, “But it’s only a shirt.” 

“Good,” the wizard replied brusquely, and without further ado, slit it up the side and let it fall from Molly’s body. 

Molly yelped in surprise at the sudden sting of cold, but recovered himself. “Honestly, Caleb, there are far easier ways to get me naked. You didn’t really need the knife, you could have just asked,” Caleb blinked at him, still not amused, “You get points for originality, though,” he added. This time, he could have sworn Caleb nearly smiled. Or perhaps he was just starting to get feverish. Either way, he was going to consider it a win. 

“I had no desire to ‘get you naked’, as you put it,” Caleb informed him, primly. 

“Are you sure about that?” Molly asked him, widening his eyes significantly and smiling, fluttering his eyelashes. 

“You’re in danger of bleeding out, Mollymauk,” he informed him, as though he’d forgotten. (Perhaps he had, briefly, Caleb’s eyes were very distracting.) “I needed a clear view of what I’m dealing with. I don’t think this is the right time for flirting.” 

“Oh it’s always the right time for flirting, my friend,” Molly corrected him, but he broke off as Caleb started poking at his wounds with a long finger. 

“You are an idiot,” he informed him, scowling “You should have had Jester take care of this as soon as we got back.”

“Jester was exhausted,” Molly replied, his voice softening slightly. 

Indeed, as soon as she’d used up the last of her spells, Jester had promptly crawled into a corner of the tavern, curled up, and fallen asleep on the bench. Molly had quietly asked Yasha to carry her upstairs before he had slipped into the back room. 

“You could have asked her to tend to you before she was exhausted, rather than letting her waste her energies on my scrapes and bruises,” Caleb accused. 

“You’re more delicate than I am, sweetheart,” Molly informed him, smiling sweetly.

Caleb scowled. He was very good at that. It must have been from all the practice. Molly found it rather endearing. 

“Delicate or not, you are definitely in more danger of dying from blood loss than I am from scrapes and bruises,” Caleb said. 

“But they were all over your pretty face,” Molly pouted, “I couldn’t have that.” 

Caleb cursed under his breath again, worry lines creasing around his eyes and between his brows. 

“It’s not that bad,” Molly assured him quietly, dropping his voice a little, “I’ve had far worse and survived, it’s fine, really.” 

“It is not fine,” Caleb asserted flatly, shaking his head. 

He stood up and made towards the door back into the main room of the tavern. “Leaving me so soon?” Molly asked.

He made to follow him, then swayed dangerously as the room spun around him. Caleb had to dart forward quickly to catch him and settle him back onto the stool. “You wait here,” he told him severely, “I’ll be back in a moment.” He took his arms away slowly, eyeing Molly, making sure he didn’t collapse without his support, then stepped away again. “Don’t move,” Caleb instructed from the door, “And don’t touch anything, either, you’ve done enough damage pawing at that already.” 

“Yes, sir,” Molly said placidly. 

Caleb gave him another one of his frowns then moved back into the bar. Molly sat on the stool as he had been told, and didn’t paw at the wound in his shoulder that continued to feebly pulse blood. On the other side of the door, he could hear voices. Caleb’s was one, and he thought the bar-tender might be the other, but he couldn’t be sure. He was starting to feel definitely dizzy, which wasn’t entirely pleasant when the cause was from blood loss as opposed to good whisky. 

The door opened and Caleb’s form reappeared, this time carrying what looked like several bottles, as well as bandages, and more rags that he had apparently either begged or bought from the bar-keep. Molly was vaguely impressed he was worth that trouble.

Caleb sat down opposite him once more. He poured out a glass of the darker bottle he’d brought, took a long, fortifying swig of it himself, then pushed the rest towards Molly with the instruction to, “Drink that. You’ll need it.”  

Then he organised his supplies. He washed his hands with the clear bottle, the smell wafting from it so strong that Molly’s eyes started watering. Then he looked up at him, not quite at his eyes, he never looked directly into anyone’s eyes, Molly had noticed, but close enough.

“This is going to hurt,” he warned him, as he soaked a thick wad of cotton in alcohol. “Try not to scream too loudly, the barkeep might not take it too kindly.”

“Why?” Molly asked, smirking, “What have you told him we’re doing back-“

The rest of his words were cut off in a low snarl and the sound of his clenched fist pounding hard against the scrubbed wooden table beside him as Caleb yanked the arrowhead out of his shoulder in one swift, fluid motion, then followed it up by pressing the alcohol-sodden rag onto the hole he’d left behind.

“Sorry,” he said quietly, seeming to actually mean it, though he didn’t look away from the wound he was currently plugging to stop it spraying blood all over them both.

“Fuck me, Caleb,”  Molly breathed, panting for breath and gripping the edge of the table so hard his claws sunk deep into it and the wood groaned in protest.

“Later, perhaps,” Caleb replied, deadpan, causing Molly to choke on the sip of whisky he had just taken. “Try and sit still, alright?” he went on, as though he hadn’t just said, well, that, “That should be the worst of it.”

“Alright,” Molly replied tightly through gritted teeth, letting his breath out slowly, his body still feeling tense, his muscles locked after the sudden burst of pain.

Caleb worked in silence for a few minutes, Molly’s eyes on his hands. He moved quickly and deftly, and didn’t seem overly flustered by the blood that by now was staining a good half of Molly’s exposed chest. He cleaned the wounds with more of the alcohol which had Molly cursing himself as it stung viciously.

“You’re quite proficient at this, you know,” he bit out, trying to distract himself from the pain as his claws forever scarred one corner of the table.

Caleb grunted wordlessly in answer.

“Where did you learn?” Molly pressed. He was going to drag a conversation out of this man if it killed him.

Caleb glanced up at him as he tossed down a rag sodden with alcohol and blood, and picked up a fresh one. Then he shrugged. “It is just a skill that I picked up.”

“From where?” Molly persisted.

“From other stupid people with holes in them,” Caleb snapped back, and Molly drew back slightly, surprised by the sudden fierceness and venom in his voice.

“Sorry,” they said at the same time, Molly’s slightly tinged with irony, Caleb’s with regret.

“I didn’t mean to pry,” Molly said, despite the fact he’d absolutely meant to pry, “You’re just a curious soul, Caleb. Very mysterious and intriguing,” Caleb grunted, not looking at him, “And handsome,” Molly added in an off-hand way. That made Caleb blush s lightly, and glance up at him again, but he made no answer, though his hunched posture relaxed somewhat.

After a long moment, by which time Caleb had finished cleaning the wounds and started stitching them up, he said quietly, “I learned from my mother.”  Molly, who had been tipping his head idly back, wondering if it might improve the dizziness (it didn’t) snapped his gaze forward again at those soft words.

“Your mother?” he repeated, vaguely.

Caleb nodded, still stitching. “She was not a doctor by any means. But she knew some things. People would come to her if they were sick or injured and she would do what she could to help them. When I got older, I would help her. She wanted to teach my sister but,” a faint smile actually tugged at the corners of his lips at the mention of her, “She fainted whenever she saw blood.”

Molly snorted at that, “It’s a good thing she’s never met me, then.”

“Quite,” Caleb replied, drily. He glanced up at Molly, hesitated a moment, as though wondering whether or not he should say whatever it was he was thinking, then he blurted, “I would have thought that you would have been more adept at this,” he said, jerking his head towards his hands, now sewing up the second of the wounds left by the crossbow bolts Molly had taken.

“My skill lies in making people bleed,” Molly replied, airily, “I’ll let you and Jester take care of making them stop.”

“That is probably wise,” Caleb said, nodding his head.

Something in his tone made Molly frown, “What does that mean?” he demanded. 

“It means I have seen where you have stitched up your wounds in the past,” he said, gesturing at a spot in Molly’s side, beneath the crossbow wounds, which he had indeed stitched up himself after one of his swords had slipped while he’d been practicing juggling them.

“And?” he said, squinting down at it, trying to decide what the problem was.

Caleb actually snorted, “And it looks as though you were both blind and drunk when you dealt with it.”

“I might have been both, now you mention it,” Molly said, airily, and Caleb just shook his head, though he was smiling, which made a warm pulse of triumph spread through Molly’s chest. “And possibly also high,” he went on, trying to remember. Caleb huffed out a soft laugh at that, and Molly found himself beaming.

“It shows,” Caleb said, “I’ve never seen a wound that ragged in all my life.”

“Well,” Molly said, leaning forward and smiling at him, “I expect these to be razor-straight by the time you’re done with them.”

“Molly.”

“Mm?”

“These wounds are circular.”

In response to that, Molly took another swig of whisky.

By this point, Caleb had finished his stitching, and set about carefully and gently winding bandages around Molly’s shoulder to keep him in one piece.

“I’m going to talk to Jester in the morning about you,” Caleb warned him, wiping Molly’s blood off his hands with a rag and throwing the cloth down onto the table, “And have her heal you up properly. In the meantime, if you do anything stupid and tear out those stitches, there won’t be any need for her to take care of you, because I’ll have murdered you.”

“I think that would be a moment I’d definitely want a cleric to take care of me,” Molly smirked in answer as Caleb helped him to his feet.

“Don’t push it,” Caleb warned him, scowling again in that frankly adorable way he did.

“Thank you, Caleb,” Molly said, stretching over to give him a grateful kiss on his cheek, but stopping halfway because of the searing pain in his side.

He and Caleb looked down at the same moment to see the long gash in his abdomen, freshly torn open by the movement. There was a moment where they both stared at it in silence as a drop of Molly’s blood slid over his hip and splattered onto the floor by Caleb’s boot.

Then Molly said “huh,” at the same time Caleb snarled in anger and pushed him back down onto his stool, as he moved around the table and gathered his things together again. He held up a hand, silencing Molly who had opened his mouth to say something, and began chanting a, frankly impressive, stream of curses in his native tongue under his breath as though they were a spell.

“That,” Molly observed in a lofty tone at a particularly colourful insult about stupid, foolish, hard-headed, reckless tieflings, “Was uncalled for. I can’t believe you spoke like that in front of your mother when you were helping her patients.”

Caleb fell silent, blinking at him in obvious shock. “You speak Zemnian?” he said, finally.

Molly shook his head, “Sadly not,” he replied, “But,” he raised a finger for emphasis, “I do know how to say all the important things in most of the languages that are spoken in Wildemount.” Caleb raised an eyebrow at him and Molly smirked and expanded. “I can curse, I can ask for a drink, and I can seduce someone in any language of their choosing.”

The corners of Caleb’s mouth twitched as though he was about to smile but didn’t want to encourage Molly any further. Which was foolish of him, because the shadow of a smile was more than enough encouragement for him, he may as well have gone the whole hog with it and done the thing properly.  

“I wouldn’t think you need any language  at all to seduce someone,” Caleb muttered under his breath.

“Well, no,” Molly allowed, fairly, “But I like keeping my options open.” There was a beat of silence, then Caleb started dabbing at the gash in his side with his alcohol again and the sting had Molly speaking again, just to try and distract himself. “Did you know,” he said through gritted teeth, “That Celestial has curse words. Seems counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? Angels cursing and all that.”

“About as counter-intuitive as a demon taking an arrow for a human,” Caleb said quietly. Molly blinked in surprise. “You thought I hadn’t noticed, didn’t you?” he said, more quietly still.

Molly stared at him for a long moment, then rallied, clearing his throat, “Well, in fairness, your eyesight is terrible.” Caleb snorted softly, “But that makes sense. I wondered why you had come back here to stop me bleeding out.”

Caleb hesitated for a moment, then dropped his gaze back to the table and muttered, “Indeed.”

Molly cocked his head to one side and peered down at Caleb. He had been perfectly willing to accept that this had been the wizard’s way of atoning for some sort of blood debt, which Molly would never have called for in any case. Right up to the point where Caleb had readily accepted this. Now it felt like a convenient lie, a way of avoiding the truth. And that made him wonder what exactly that truth was, and why Caleb would pretend this was nothing more than some kind of cold-blooded exchange in order to cover it up.

He opened his mouth to poke and press a little more, but Caleb got there first. He had paused, having finished cleaning the tear in his side, and paused to pick up the curved needle he’d been using to stitch him up, and Molly strangely missed the feeling of his hands, which were calloused and rough, yet warm, and gentle, and welcome all the same.

“Did they hurt?” he asked, quietly.

Molly felt himself tense instinctively.

Of course, he’d been sitting here for the last twenty minutes or so with Caleb in very close proximity to his chest, almost every inch of which was covered in heavy scarring. It never took people long to start enquiring about them. They were strange, and ugly, and they drew the eyes and the morbid fascination of anyone who cared to spend more than a moment in his company.  

The only person who had never asked, in all the time he’d known them, had been Yasha. And that was because she was, well,  _Yasha_.

He had seen them all looking at him. Sometimes with pity, sometimes with curiosity, but all wondering the same things behind that polite veil they all kept up that stopped them from asking him outright.

He took a deep breath, bracing himself, wondering which prepared line he was going to spit in Caleb’s direction, when he realised that he wasn’t entirely sure Caleb was looking at his scars.

Thrown by this, he said vaguely, “Did what hurt?”

“These,” Caleb said quietly.

Absently, as though without realising that he was doing it, he raised a finger and gently stroked it the length of the peacock tattoo that began on Molly’s neck and curved own into the blossoming flowers on his arm, all the way down to the coiling snake down his arm.

The contact had him shivering, as though there was lightning dancing on the tips of Caleb’s fingers, sparking through his nerves.

“Oh monstrously,” Molly said, grinning broadly, realising, properly, for the first time, how close Caleb was to him in this moment.

Somehow he hadn’t quite realised before. The way their knees brushed together as they shifted slightly in place. The way their proximity let Molly see the faint splattering of freckles that patterned his nose and cheeks, like stars tossed carelessly across the sky. The way his pale blue eyes avoided the piercing glare of Molly’s scarlet. The soft heat of his breath against his skin.

“I was very brave,” he purred lazily, trying to regain some semblance of control, both over himself and the situation.

“I’m sure,” Caleb responded, lips pursed.

He picked up the needle, dragged the catgut he was using for the sutures through the alcohol, then set to work again. “Do they mean something?” he asked as he bent closer to Molly’s side. With an irritable huff, he flicked his wrist and summoned a few balls of light to help him see better as he worked.

“Probably,” Molly replied brightly and, though Caleb would never believe it, perfectly truthfully.

“Don’t you know?” he asked, frowning slightly as he started making the first few stitches and Molly winced.

It wasn’t exactly painful, he had endured far worse, but honestly, he was wishing about now he’d just sat in here with a good bottle of whisky and bled until he’d fallen asleep. It was an uncomfortable feeling, the strange rushing, slithering sensation of the catgut being pulled through his skin as it closed up his wound.

“Certainly I know,” he lied through his teeth, “It just depends.”

“Their meaning depends?” Caleb repeated, scepticism heavy in his tone, “How can a meaning be dependent? Dependent on what?”

“On how I’m feeling,” Molly replied at once, “And who I’m talking to. How much I’ve had to drink. What the weather’s like. A whole host of things, to tell the truth.”

Caleb eyed him for a long moment as though not at all sure how to take that. Then, he unexpectedly huffed out a soft laugh.

“I don’t know what else I expected from you,” he said, shaking his head.

“That’s good, you’re learning,” Molly replied with a soft smile.

“I am not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing,” Caleb observed, threading the needle once more and then going back to work.

“Oh I should think it’s a _terrible_  thing,” Molly shot back, grinning broadly in that way of his, the way where it was just a little too wide, and contained a little too much teeth to be anything other than vaguely unsettling.

“You’re probably right,” Caleb sighed, as though resigning himself to something.

Molly bared his fangs at him in answer. Caleb actually smiled at that.

He worked in silence for a long while, Molly swigging on his cup of whisky, and wincing as Caleb pulled the sutures tight.

He cursed brutally, banging a fist on the table when Caleb accidentally caught one of the ragged edges of the wound with the tip of the needle.

“Sorry,” he murmured.

“It’s alright,” Molly tried to assure him through gritted teeth.

There was another brief silence, then Caleb said, voice carrying a tense strain, “You need to be more careful.”

Molly just grunted at that, shifting restlessly on his stool, wanting this to be over, feeling Caleb’s irritable hand clench around his hip, steadying him.

“It’s only another scar.”  He shrugged and smiled, gesturing at his body as though it were a canvas, “It won’t be lonely.”

“It is not only another scar,” Caleb snapped, voice brittle. Molly blinked down at him in surprise as the atmosphere of the room changed so rapidly a group of assassins might have just burst in through the door and shattered the mellow peace they had been languishing in but a moment before. Molly was still trying to recover from the shock of Caleb’s outburst when he continued, jabbing a finger at the gash he was in the process of mending, “This, this is not just a scar. This is something that could have killed you if it had just been a little deeper, a little differently angled.”

“Caleb-“ Molly began, raising his hands and trying to calm him, uncertain where this had all come from, but in hindsight, he realised Caleb had been as talkative as he had been because he, like Molly himself, had been seeking a distraction from pain. It had just been of an entirely different sort to the one Molly had been trying to block out.

“This is not just another scar for you to carry in the future, it is the thin line between life and death. Your death.”

Molly was no stranger to that line. It was one he walked on each time they fought. It was one he taunted, and mocked, and danced a little closer to each time he drew his own blood in battle.

“Well,” he said, slowly, trying to lighten the tone of things again, “I fell on the right side of it this time, didn’t I? Keep your fingers crossed that keeps up, won’t you?” he said, grinning lazily.

Caleb’s hand jerked sharply and Molly hissed as he tore the suture he’d been in the process of pulling through, bursting through the skin he’d been attempting to pull together.

“This is not a game!” he snapped at Molly, who drew back instinctively at the sudden anger twisting his face, like pulsing thunderheads suddenly spilling from the maw of an angry demon to blacken the once calm grey sky. “You,” he pointed a shaking finger in Molly’s face, “You sit there and you laugh, and you make your jokes, but we are putting ourselves in dangerous situations every  _fucking_  day.”

His voice was trembling now, with some deep emotion that Molly couldn’t place. But before he could say anything, Caleb went ranting on, “We are being injured, and we are fighting, and killing, and risking ourselves together and you- all of you- you act as though this is some kind of game. People have  _died_. Lots of people have died.”

A shiver wracked his thin frame.

“I killed them,” he whispered.

His eyes glazed over as he slipped from the stool and fell to his knees, and Molly knew, somehow, that he was no longer talking about their exploits with the rest of their group. He had sunk deep into himself, and was drifting away, far away, from the back room of this quiet little tavern and the wide, horrified eyes of Mollymauk.

Caleb mouthed soundlessly, staring in horror at something that Molly couldn’t see, then he choked out, “I killed them all.” His whole body began to tremble and his attention snapped back to Molly so suddenly that it was alarming as he said, “This is not a game, Molly. It is not. War is not a game. It’s not, it’s not, I know it, it’s not, it-“

He was babbling incoherently now, and Molly found himself on his knees beside him, desperate to soothe him. He reached out and touched Caleb’s arm, and when he leaned into him, he shuffled closer and wrapped his arms around him, pulling him in close and letting him sob against his chest, mindless of his wounds.

“Shh,” he breathed softly, using the same soft, mellow voice he used when Yasha had nightmares, “Shh, it’s alright, it’s alright. We’re not a war, Caleb. You hear me?” He repeated, giving him a gentle shake when he didn’t response, “We’re not at war.”

Caleb looked up at him with those tortured blue eyes, and for the first time since he had met him, Molly looked and saw reflected there the shadow of the monster that had tortured him.

“Not anymore,” he breathed, and the words cracked a fissure in Molly’s heart that seemed to pierce right down into his soul.

Caleb’s head hung limply and he began to shake it, as though that could rid it of whatever memories were plaguing it. Clearly it had no effect, because a moment later he let out a low moan and gripped it tightly in his hands, his whole body shaking violently.

“Hey, hey!” Molly said, sharply, putting a bite into his words to snap Caleb’s attention back to him, “Listen to me, Caleb, Caleb, listen to me.”

The use of his name seemed to help anchor him somehow. He reached out and gripped Molly’s forearm so tightly his nails bit painfully into his flesh, but he wasn’t about to complain.

“ _You’re_  not at war anymore,” he told him softly, stroking a stray lock of red hair behind his ear, cradling his face gently between his own scarred hands. “You’re safe now,” he promised him, keeping his voice low and as steady as he could. “You’re here with me and you’re safe, I promise. It’s alright, it’s alright now. You survived, Caleb. You came back.”

Caleb looked up at him at that, meeting his eyes for the first time, and smiled sadly, almost pityingly, at him.

He shook his head, “That is the lie they tell us before they send us to fight,” he breathed softly. “That some of us will survive.”He blinked, and his eyes refocused to a point beyond Molly, to a darkness that knew only the sounds of his screams and the pain of his grief and guilt. His voice was a faint whisper when he said, “The ones they forgot to bury are the deadest of them all.”

“Caleb-“ Molly began.

But Caleb looked back at him again, focused on him once more, and said with a firmness that had been missing from him, “I killed people, Mollymauk. Lots of people. I deserve this, I know that.”

“That’s not-“ Molly started, angrily, but again Caleb cut him off.

“They died because of me, and nothing else,” he continued. His voice had fallen now, becoming flat and monotone, and his tone was removed and emotionless, as though he was narrating the thoughts of someone else. “That battle was pointless. Their deaths were meaningless. The war was senseless. So many people died. Hundreds of them.  _Thousands_  of them. For nothing. It didn’t...It didn’t make any sense. Killing them didn’t make any sense but I still did it. I still did it.”

“Caleb,” Molly snapped, and this time he didn’t let the broken wizard interrupt him. “ _Life_ is senseless. And pointless. And meaningless. And everything else you just said. We don’t have a purpose here, and anyone who thinks differently is kidding themselves.” Caleb blinked at him, as though barely registering the words as speech. “You did what you had to do.  We’ve all done what we’ve had to do, and most of us aren’t proud of it, but we survived, and we’re here, and that’s all there is to it.”

“I am a monster, Molly,” he whispered back.

Molly snorted, which seemed to startle Caleb out of his apathy, “People have said the same thing about me pretty much every day of my life. It hasn’t changed it very much.”

“How can say that?” Caleb demanded, his eyes wide, “How can say it doesn’t matter, how can you say-“

“Because it  _doesn’t_ ,” Molly said, firmly. “Nothing matters. Nothing has any meaning. A stranger that you pass in the street doesn’t mean anything to you unless you stop and get to know them. A book on a  shelf could have the potential to change the world, but it doesn’t mean a thing if no-one ever takes it down and reads it. A wizard in a tattered cloak with haunted doesn’t mean a thing until he meets someone he wants to live for again.”

Caleb looked up at him at that, and stared at him, his mouth slightly open, his eyes wet with unshed tears. But he didn’t interrupt or contradict him.

Molly continued, “Life doesn’t mean anything at all until you choose to make it something. So choose, Caleb. Because we need you.  _Nott_  needs you.” Caleb swallowed at that, and nodded, barely a rough jerk of his head but it was something. “And right now,” Molly groaned, heaving himself back up onto his stool with difficulty, “ _I_ need you to stitch me up and stop me bleeding all over this tavern’s floor. So get up and hop to it.”

Miraculously, Caleb rose slowly, picked up the stool he had knocked over in his anguish, set it down precisely where it had been, sat himself on it, then picked up his needle once more.

There was a long silence, in which Molly sipped at his whisky and closed his eyes as it burned down his throat, nicely complementing the stinging in his side.

It was broken by Caleb who said, his voice slightly more ragged than usual, but otherwise seemingly composed, “You speak about these things as though you understand. As though you have been through-“ he broke off, swallowed, then said, “As though you have been through what I have been through.”

“Oh, I’m sure I’ve been through plenty,” Molly replied lightly between sips of whisky, “But you know as much about it as I do.”

Caleb frowned darkly at that, apparently not at all appreciating the cryptic response. “I don’t understand what you mean by that,” he said, finally.

Molly hesitated for a long moment, wondering what to say, which lie to tell in this moment. Finally, he settled on the truth. “I don’t remember,” he said with a shrug that was supposed to look idle, but in truth was anything but. Caleb started, staring up at him, the furrow between his brows deepening. Molly continued before he could say anything more, “I woke up in a ditch at the side of the road where Orna found me around two years ago. Those two years are all I remember.”

“That’s, that’s all?” Caleb said looking shocked at the very thought, “You...You don’t remember anything else?”

“Not a thing,” Molly replied stoutly. “Not my father’s name or my mother’s face, or the smell of my home. Nothing.”

“How...How did you deal with that?” Caleb asked, looking almost afraid of the response it might provoke.

Molly shrugged, shifting into a slightly more comfortable position on the stool, which was starting to make him ache worse than the wounds. “Not well, to begin with,” he admitted conversationally. “I cursed. I screamed. I cried, I cried a lot, I felt hopeless and lost. I still feel like that sometimes,” he confessed and it felt...Strangely good to finally be able to speak about this after so long of hiding it. “But if I learned anything those months I spent aching, and silent, and haunted by things I didn’t know the name or the shape of, it’s that the world won’t wait for you to get your shit together.”

Caleb looked as though he was almost going to laugh at that, and Molly took that as a slight victory, given the circumstances.

“Life keeps going. The only choice you get is whether you go with it or stand still and get stuck,” he fiddled idly with the now almost empty cup of whisky and said, before he threw back the last of it, “I’ve never been one for standing still.”

“That sounds...Difficult to deal with,” Caleb said, finally. “I sometimes wish that I could forget the things I’ve seen and the things I’ve done. But I suppose you be the first to tell me it’s not all I think it would be.”

“Definitely,” Molly agreed. “And it is, difficult, that is. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I’ve done, or where I’ve been, or who I might have loved. I’m just...Empty.”

“I imagine,” Caleb said slowly, carefully, as though he weighed each word, “That it might be hard to live like that.”

“It is,” Molly agreed, not seeing the point in dressing it up or watering it down. “But I realised a long time ago that I’d rather live like this than not at all.”

Caleb seemed to chew on that for a long time, and finished stitching and bandaging Molly’s side in silence. When he was done he cleaned the blood from his hands with the alcohol he’d been using to sterilise Molly’s wounds, then he said, as though there had been no pause between his words and Molly’s last, “I think...I think I would rather that, too.”

Molly smiled and clapped him on the shoulder, “Good man,” he said.

Then he used the table to pry himself off his stool and stand up without swaying too much. “And now,” he announced, “We should get some sleep.”

“Yes,” Caleb agreed. Then he moved to Molly’s side, “Here,” he murmured, sliding an arm around Molly’s waist and slinging one of his arms across his shoulders to support him,  “Let me help you, or you’ll undo all the good work I just did.”

Molly grunted his acknowledgement, and didn’t protest this idea one bit. The thought of navigating the rickety tavern’s stairs to his room unassisted was enough to make him want to flop back down onto his stool and announce that he’d just sleep down here.

The bar was quiet now. The time they had spent sewing, and talking, and having mild breakdowns, had allowed the rest of the tavern’s patrons to clear off to their respective rooms. Caleb helped Molly up the stairs, then walked past his door to his room with him. He helped Molly, whose fingers felt thick and clumsy now, with the key to his room, then settled him gently on his bed.

“Thank you,” Molly mumbled thickly. Exhaustion was starting to seep into his brain and settle over his thoughts like a thick fog, and he was having trouble stringing words together.

Caleb laid him down and covered him in blankets with a gruff, “You are welcome,” and Molly found himself sleeping almost at once.

When he woke the next morning, he could have sworn to himself he’d had the sweetest of dreams, in which Caleb had hesitated before softly kissing his forehead, as he had once done to him, and had lingered at the door of his room, framed by the dim light of the candle in the hallway beyond, and had murmured a soft, “Thank you,”  of his own before he had slipped out and let him sleep.

******************************************************************************

**Author's Note:**

> I'm Iffy about the more emotional content here, but at the end of the day, I stand by the way I wrote Caleb. I feel like he's the kind of character that just bottles everything up, and up, and up, and when he reaches breaking point it's sudden and almost completely unexpected. 
> 
> EITHER WAY I had a blast writing this, and if u enjoyed reading it, ur comments FUEL ME, THANK YOU FOR ALL THE FEEDBACK I'VE GOTTEN SO FAR, IT'S AMAZING!!


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